


Thoughts of Winter

by StrangerThanDiction



Category: Mamamoo
Genre: And for anyone else going through the same, Comfort/Angst, For Wheein who's going through a hard time right now, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 18:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20440280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangerThanDiction/pseuds/StrangerThanDiction
Summary: Wheein's lonely reflections in the harshness of winter.





	Thoughts of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> "Dad says if you laugh once, two of your worries will disappear." -Hwasa, Be Calm

_There is light and darkness in all of us. The only aspect we can control is how we withstand them._

Winter was more than just a season. It was invasive - personal. Its icy tendrils penetrated her body and cracked and spread. It made her insides feel frigid and barren. No seed of warmth could blossom in the sterile land that Winter birthed.

The girl in the gray hoodie sat on the knobbled root of a tree shielded by the fragments of shade its dead limbs provided. She was already a tiny girl, but, in conjunction with both the largeness of the drooping tree and the oversized hoodie, she appeared even smaller.

Her legs steepled before her acted as a shield to those who might decide to come near and peak at what she scribbled in her notebook. They wouldn’t have known even if they saw. The pages only contained incohesive drawings and near illegible scrawls of words too tiny and faded to read.

She hadn’t even known what she was writing before - only that if she didn’t somehow put something on these pages she wouldn’t exist.

At the start, these pages were her. Blank. They held no purpose if you gave them none. She felt too much like that. Thoughts and anxieties build up until they reach a breaking point and they explode out into sadness or rage. Left alone sobbing into a drenched pillow for reasons she couldn’t even name anymore.

And then she ran out. Of tears. Of purpose. Of worry. And she was

Blank.

The girl shuddered in the snapping wind and huddled closer against the tree. She stared at the brittle, markless page. She never knew she could long for the running lines of ink on September’s pages or the dark, rage-filled pages of June. Not this. This was dead.

And if her pages weren’t alive, how could she be?

Her pencil remained gripped in her right hand with the same intensity of a drowning man holding onto a life preserver.

Maybe some would think her as foolish for putting so much value onto the pages of a journal she got in the fifth grade. Others would know that sometimes it can be the most insignificant thing that will keep you alive for one more day.

And hers was failing.

Her arm remained stapled to her side and her thoughts drifted to dreadful places within her that were always there - whether they lie buried through sheer will or exposed through the inevitably of her nature to be sensitive to that darkness.

Every descent felt worse than the last. Yet every single time she climbed out of that pit somehow. She knew it would come back and evil, muttering thoughts whispered of her never being free of its clutches.

It was an inescapable depression. It was the stalking predator of anxiety. It was the lingering thought of never being good enough. It was the whisper that death would be better than living like this.

And yet, there was also the thought of those times she was happy. There was also the thought of better days to come. There was also the thought that she had purpose and that someone, somewhere cared about her even if wasn’t now and even if it would only be ten years in the future.

It was the idea of the future that destroyed her and it was also the same idea that saved her. She remained a living proof of painful contradictions. But she was living.

So she held onto the pencil with her dying man’s grip even though she couldn’t even bear to write. She could write. She would write. She just needed time.

She sat there on the knobbled root of the waning tree too numb and scared to move. Even through the wind pierced through the cotton of her hoodie and the flesh of skin into her core.

The sound of boots that crunched through the old snow was around her. She was in a public park, but only a smattering of people would come out in this type of weather and they walked past her, distracted with their own lives. She couldn’t blame them; she was distracted too.

But this time, the crunching of snow halted right in front of her. She looked up curiously at the figure with eyes blurry from either tears or staring too long at blank paper. She blinked several times as the figure pulled down their face mask and squatted in front of her.

“Hey. You’re Jung Wheein, right?” The woman asked, her chesnut face framed by the darker fur coat she wore. Wheein stared at her in confusion, immediately fearful that she should’ve known this person. “It’s Hyejin, from Mr. Choi’s Japanese Lit class.”

Wheein creaked her neck up and down on its hinges in what she felt was a nod. She didn’t recognize the name, but the class was correct so she must have had some validity.

“Hi Hyejin.”

The girl appeared the grow uncomfortable suddenly and shifted on her haunches. “I - uh - I have to walk through the park to get to my _halmeoni_’s house and I was there for awhile. And, well, I’m thinking you haven’t moved an inch in two hours at least.” Wheein worried her lip. Had it really been that long? “So I just was stopping to see if you were okay.”

“I’m fine.” She answered immediately. It was the polite response and the one people are most welcome to. She doesn’t know her, there’s no reason to try to bog her down with her own problems.

“You look half-frozen.” Hyejin said sternly and poked the girl’s leg. “Get up please. I’ll buy you tea.”

“No, no.” Wheein attempted to wave her away. “I’m just thinking.”

“Must be thinking about something awful sad.” She startled at the girl’s abrupt tone. “Look, someone else might let you get away with ‘I’m fine’, but I can tell you’re not in a good place right now and what kind of person would I be to ignore that?”

Wheein opened her mouth and closed it. Her grip on her pencil loosened slightly.

“So either I can buy you a nice hot tea or we’ll both freeze our asses off out here for a while.”

Her throat felt dry as she stared into the unrelenting brown eyes of this girl. “You don’t know me.”

“I don’t have to.”

Perhaps sensing Wheein wouldn’t be moving anytime soon, Hyejin settled onto the snow beside and crossed her legs with the resoluteness of a soldier holding their ground. Her immediate reaction was to try to shift the journal out of the girl’s sight even if its current page was only blank. Hyejin doesn’t glance anywhere but her face.

“Are you cold?”

“No.” She lied.

“It would be much warmer in a tea shop.”

“I’m not cold.”

From a distance, Wheein knew she was being rude. It was a safety measure, it could keep most people at a healthy distance. Hyejin didn’t move.

“You know, I prefer coffee, but I suggested tea because most people here like it better. I feel like I know a coffee drinker by sight, but if I was wrong about you, please correct me.”

“I do prefer tea.” Wheein responded despite herself.

“So you turning down free tea is supposed to reassure me of you being ‘fine’?” Hyejin tilted her head curiously. “I’m very perplexed right now Wheein.”

Absently, she ran her fingertips across the binding of her journal and Hyejin caught the movement as if only just noticing it was there. Her eyes crinkled softly in understanding.

“You said you’re buying?”

“Of course!” Hyejin’s face lit up with relief and she half-pulled Wheein up to her feet along with herself. “I knew no one under the age of twenty could resist free shit!”

A minuscule smile slips onto Wheein’s face and falls just as quickly. Hyejin doesn’t see it. She doesn’t have to.

Wheein put the pencil in her coat pocket and shut the journal. Momentarily, she lets go of its blank pages and her own.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for Wheein. But I also wrote it for myself and for you. Sadness doesn't last forever. 
> 
> I hope you have a good day! And if you're not, look forward to better days to come.


End file.
